Kitchener-Waterloo

City services focus of innovation lab coming to Kitchener's Communitech

Kitchener is aiming to improve efficiency in city services such as waste management and traffic, and looking to a new innovation lab at Communitech for solutions.

Lab will bring tech solutions to city challenges

The Tannery in downtown Kitchener is home to Communitech. (CBC News)

A new innovation lab in Kitchener's downtown core this fall hopes to make city services more efficient, easy to use and environmentally friendly.

Located in Communitech, the lab will focus on creating technological solutions to municipal problems like waste management, traffic and connectivity.

It will be run by a team of co-op students and city staff led by Karl Allen-Muncey, entrepreneur and technology expert newly-named as innovation lab director.

Allen-Muncey's "blend of business development, marketing and tech skills will be invaluable in helping people build an interest in the work happening at the lab so that people can get excited about our future together as citizens, and as a city," Dan Murray, director of technology innovation and services said in a release.

The lab will open in the Tannery in late September.